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"That's outrageous!" He said.
"You're a ******* fool" I muttered.
That's pennies on the dream.
If you think that the four dollars
   And 29 cents is for a piece of plastic with some ink and a ballpoint then you're probably just making a grocery list.
A pen  is not for scribbling to do lists.
There is an app for that.

A pen is for unlocking dreams and opening windows.
It's for recording the nightmares and victories of a life worth living.
If you don't have PTSD from one thing or another by 28, then you aren't living right.

"You're a madman" he chuckled.
Maybe so.
But I think the price is worth it.
Life is a continuous chain of very many pains
At times up to top at times down town trains
Full of wrath, odds trials tribulations, disdains
In thundering light in snow and in drizzling rains

Love and life are just connected stage by stage
Where human anxiety converts in anger and rage
From birth till death we are imprisoned in cage
But we emit and accept all light streaks like a sage

You may love one or very many blooming in a row
When spring touches cheeks they glow to show
This is how life stream is to encounter and to flow
Let sow love seeds my love to grow and to glow

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
 Apr 2017 Jim Marchel
Autumn Rose
I saw the world through
eyes of glass.
Ghost, tall and thin.
What I can't see, please tell me.
- Little petals, white and rosy.
Flying in your garden
You really can't see the beauty
in everything,
I don't even think you can see me.
... But Cherry Blossom
on a moonlit night
 Apr 2017 Jim Marchel
anu
Feeling myself great
As I could smile from my heart
By accepting the fact that
whatever happens life must go on
I c would smile with a inner pain.
Thank God !!
Thanks to poet friends
Who always hears me !!
I am bound to sip poison of life drop by drop
This is how my destiny just wants me to live
A sharp blunt dagger wants but me to chop
I don not know except life what else I can give

Life is a broken thread from a place unknown
How can I compromise with predestined destiny
Very many ups and downs I have been shown
Oh my God what is life and what is its beauty

In my helplessness I cannot express my feelings
What I can do is to cross limits with head down
With love strings I want to see blooming springs
To be the best possible creation to wear crown

Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
Copyright 2017 Golden Glow
 Feb 2017 Jim Marchel
SE Reimer
~

so long ago, the
battle fields he’d left;
the foxholes where
for many nights he'd
lain his weary head.
together ’til a victor
named they’d daily fought,
then parted ways as
shell-shock bonded,
comrade friends,
brothers, arms-in-armor.
few survived and
those who did,
wore battle scars
that most can’t see.
left behind
the fallen proud,
their darkened images,
etched like stone.
from sharpened knife,
runs deep regret;
this searing pain,
like smoke in eyes...
these bayonetted memories.

older now,
so much has changed,
those mem’ries live,
though rearranged.
new battle lines are drawn
in hopes of
absolution carried,
heavy, deep regret...
emerald valleys,
blood-stained volleys,
full of memory;
the un-forgiveness buried
in fallow soil ’neath,
but few inches shallow,
the forgetfulness of
daily toil in grief,
for a life lived full
while others died.
etched like stone,
from sharpened knife,
runs deep regret;
seared painfully,
like smoke in eyes...
those bayonetted memories.


now autumn falls
upon his land;
as winter’s blade
is sharpened thin,
he marks time by
raking leaves,
like fallen comrades,
he draws battle lines
on grass of green;
like photos faded
now too his memory,
takes him back,
to that smoke arising,
soldiers charging,
more wounded crying,
with each rifle’s crack,
the fear of dying,
so soon exchanged
for sting of living on.
etched like stone,
from sharpened knife,
runs deep regret;
a searing pain,
like smoke in eyes...
his bayonetted memories.

yet still he tries
to turn this scene
into a work of beauty,
even sculpted art;
he changes battle lines,
with these bleeding leaves,
in hope of different end.
as he wishes in
his beating heart,
all his foxhole
friends and brothers,
lost upon these hills of green,
had gone home with him
to fathers, mothers,
living on to tell,
a story all their own.
instead ’tis he that
holds their story in;
’til his dying breath,
this his only sin
in living on...
etched like stone,
from sharpened knife,
runs deep regret;
seared in pain,
like smoke in eyes...
fading bayonetted memories.

~

*post script.

this comes from a short i came across years ago by an older writer who tells this story of his father, a WW1 veteran, who after surviving battles on the European front, returned to raise a family, while privately dealing with wartime anguish, accompanying survivor’s guilt, long before "shell-shock" was diagnosed as PTSD.  he, the son, observed on many occasions his father raking leaves into columns and rows, then moving and rearranging them. not till years later just before his father passed, did he ask and learn the profound meaning.  

i am a fan of veterans, foremost my father ((Korea) and my son (Iraq), and also a huge proponent of CAMP HOPE, who "provides interim housing for our Wounded Warriors, veterans and their families suffering from combat related PTSD in a caring and positive environment."

(the original author of what inspired my words above i looked for
that i might provide provide proper credit here, but failed to find.
any suggestions would be most welcome.)
You called me golden
Like, perhaps, I could be a California river.
But I, with my hooded eyes, never thought
I was soaked in sunlight or shimmering in wealth
Until I found you sifting through me
Marveling at a beauty I cannot see:
Telling how the sun makes me sparkle,
Bragging about the curve of my body through the hills.
The more you boasted, the more came to see
And now I know I am that swollen western stream,
A run of water muddied by your boots,
Scattered with pebbles of treasure
Winding south with the current down to the sea.
I am that western vein because I know
I give more than I take, and I know
I could never stick around for long.
You're like the others
Who held me in a pan and
Walked away with all I could give them.
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